Black, No Sugar
by Hamtaro23
Summary: The first thing she sees is his face, bruised like some smashed piece of fruit, hovering past the barrel of her .380. And: coffee, songs, confessions at the diner.
Sooooo...this ship really grew on me and because I know nothing about these characters beyond the show, some this is pure speculation. First stab, in a long time, at any kind of fanfic much less a non-FMA one so please bear with me. I really, really needed to get this out of my system so I can go back to doing real work. RR!

* * *

The first thing she sees is his face, bruised like some smashed piece of fruit, hovering past the barrel of her .380. She had known he was the one outside her apartment before he stepped out from behind the half-open door. Still, a knot had tightened in her stomach as she approached the door, working its way up through her chest until it lodged itself, a solid mass of nerves and adrenaline, in her windpipe. All the air escapes her lung in one hollow, raspy breath when she sees him step fully out into the open.

Shushing her quietly, Frank walks past the door and into her apartment. Standing there with his arms and palms outstretched, he looks like an apologetic boyfriend coming to make amends after a bad fight, a fight he knew was all his fault.

Then she remembers just _who_ he is and, in one swift motion, she points the .380 squarely at his chest, "Hands on your head Frank."

He takes a step toward her in response.

"I mean it Frank." She cocks the gun, a show of force meant not so much to scare him but to drown out the thunder of blood pulsing through her ears.

"It wasn't me," he says, taking another step.

"Hands on your head or I will unload this thing, I swear to Christ!" She barks the words as if they were bullets fired in his direction.

"It wasn't me," he repeats, slowly and firmly.

"Do it."

"Okay, okay." This time he complies. Lifting his hands to his head, he whispers, "Hey."

For a second, the unexpected tenderness in his voice gives her pause. _It wasn't me._ She wants to believe him. Maybe she does. But suddenly she is so tired of his vulnerable tough guy crap. What exactly gives him the right to just come to _her_ like _this_ , after the shit he pulled on the stand and after breaking out of prison and after all the shootings, to just come and ask her to trust him, after all that, as if they even had a shot at –

Before she even knows what is happening, she is on the ground with his arms cradling her head and bullets raining down on them through the window. Staccato bursts of gunfire cut across her apartment like a buzz saw, splintering wood and shattering glass. She could hear each bullet dig into the walls a with muted thud, kicking up dirt and dust all around them.

When the bullets finally stop, she realizes just how tightly she had been gripping his arm. "Jesus Christ," she breathes.

"Do you believe me now?" His question was almost rhetorical.

"I believe you. I believe you." She says it twice as if it were a prayer.

* * *

When they get back in the car – her car, which he had commandeered (not stolen, he insists) – he tells her it is okay to go, to walk away, in a voice that said it might not be so okay, so she stays.

Ostensibly, she stays so as not to give the Blacksmith yet another stab at her life. "Third time's the charm," she jests. But, as Frank pulled the car out of the hotel parking lot, she could not shake the feeling that she had stayed just to be with him.

* * *

They are sitting in a diner in a neighborhood Karen instantly pegs as "sketchy," an observation that, unsurprisingly, does not bother Frank. Except for someone sitting at the opposite end of the diner and the waitress, they have the place to themselves.

"Almost took the shot." She says with a half-sly, half-self-conscious grin.

"Hah, didya?" He makes a sound that could almost pass for a chuckle and takes another swig of his coffee. "And uh," he looks at her from under the brim of his baseball cap, "can I ask you why you didn't?"

"Because I believe you."

Her answer is so ordinary – so _obvious_ – that this time he actually laughs. _Because I believe you._

Silence settles in between them, sitting itself down cozily above their coffee cups. A grin tugs at the corners of his mouth when he hears her hum along to the song coming in and out of the radio under her breath. He tries to hide it by taking another sip of coffee only to find his cup empty. Careful not to disturb her, he brings the waitress over to their table for a refill with a small, silent wave.

"So you, uh, like this song?" He asks finally.

"What? No, I mean, uh, yeah, I mean, um," Karen stops and cups her temples with her hands. Shaking her head slightly, she brushes her hair back and shoots him an apologetic smile, "I'm sorry. You were saying?"

"This song," he says with a slight jerk of his head, "You were hummin' along."

"Oh," her voice barely a whisper, "Was I?"

"Yeah. You were."

She draws her coffee cup closer to her, "I, uh, used to listen to this song all the time growing up. It reminds me of my, uh," she tries to mouth the word 'brother' but her lips refuse, quivering between a smile, a frown, and every emotion in existence. "Reminds me of home, my home," she barely manages to finish.

Without giving him an opportunity to probe further, she leans in close across the table, pushing her half-empty coffee cup towards him and quips, "Can I ask you something now?"

"Ma'am?" His turn to be caught off guard.

"The coffee," she repeats and Frank catches a flash of Karen's journalist bent, "why do you always drink so much black coffee?"

He stacks his hand one on top of the other and sits back in the booth, reestablishing the distance she had momentarily closed between them. "For all the things the marines got right, they sure as hell didn't get how to make a good goddamn cuppa coffee."

She looks at him for a moment, head askance. Then, leaning back and mirroring his body language, she ventures, "But that's not the whole story, is it?"

He concedes the point, "Guess not. Can never walk away from story, can you, huh."

"Nope, especially not one about the big, bad Punisher's drink of choice."

"Okay." He nods a couple of times, the bruised violence of his face shifting into a grimace ever so slightly under his cap, "You wanna know the whole story? Okay. The whole story is that the coffee lets me not sleep. 'Cause every time I close my goddamn eyes I can still see them. Lisa. Frank Jr. My wife. Just going 'bout their lives as if nothin' ever happened. Going on without me. Is that what you wanted to hear? That the big, bad Punisher afraid of seeing shit in his sleep?"

"No, Frank, that's not, no, that's not it at all. I—"

"You what?" He shoots back, "Shit, maybe it would've been better if I died or some shit in the fucking desert and never fucking came back. Maybe I should've—"

"I killed my brother." The words come tumbling out so fast and so carelessly, like water spilling from a toppled glass, that her hand instinctively snaps to her mouth.

Karen's face plays host to a dozen emotions, each transient and ephemeral as the next. "It was a car accident. He was driving and I was," her breath hitches in her throat, "I was messing with the radio when that song, that song I was humming came on and, God, he said he didn't want to hear it. But, I, uh," Her eyes are glued to her coffee cup, "But I did. He'd change it to something else and I'd change it back. And we went back and force and then his hand just slipped on the wheel and—Fuck, it was just so stupid. So fucking stupid."

Even after all these years, she still does not know what to call the thing building up in her chest, the thing that has been trying to swallow her whole the entire time, turning her inside out so completely and violently she does not know what will happen to her after it is done.

But not today, not in front of him and that look of his that somehow knows her better than she knows herself.

"Don't you dare tell me you're better off dead," she continues quietly, "You, you, you don't just get to _decide_ you're dead to the world," she looks him straight in the eyes and adds, "because you don't just get to decide you're dead to me."

"Okay," he says and not much more, "Okay. I'm okay with that ma'am."

When she looks at him again, she could almost see the smallest of smiles creeping across his face – small, but probably the best smile she has seen from him yet.


End file.
